


It Looks Better On Me, Anyway

by faeleverte



Category: The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Gen, LSV, Silly, Suit Damage, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 18:32:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/pseuds/faeleverte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't leave your clothes lying around Avengers Tower. Really. Just don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Looks Better On Me, Anyway

"Oh, hey, it's not so bad! Just wear what you had on yesterday. I mean, you've seen one black suit, you've seen 'em all, right?"

"Buttons, Barton," Coulson huffed softly. "Shirts don't stay on well without buttons, and, after your overenthusiastic greeting when I arrived last night, I don't think even JARVIS knows where most of the buttons went."

"Actually, Agent Coulson," began the smooth voice from the ceiling.

"I was exaggerating, JARVIS," Coulson interrupted. He pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose; the "I Woke Up in the Same House as the Avengers" headache was now well underway. "All I really want to know at this exact moment of time is this: why is the garment bag that was, as recently as last night, holding my favorite suit now smoking on the deck?"

***

Clint was lounging in the most comfortable corner of the most comfortable sofa in the main lounge, alone for a change, one hand thrown over his head, draped over the arm of the couch. One booted foot was kicked up on the back of the couch, and the other was shoved in the crack between the cushions of the back. His other hand held a book, tattered to the point of nearly losing the cover, on his chest. 

Phil Coulson stopped in the doorway, leaning his shoulder casually against the frame, admiring his favorite hands as they turned the pages on his favorite book. He knew this was where the reading stash in his office kept disappearing to, but he had not yet managed to catch Clint stealing them or returning them. This was no time for a reprimand, however, not with the surprisingly soft skin of toned triceps exposed and in such a convenient position. He elbowed himself off the doorframe and walked slowly to the couch, allowing his footsteps to rustle the carpet - no sense wasting time warding off a knife attack.

He swung the garment bag that contained his own favorite suit (and Clint's favorite shirt and tie) off his back and dropped it across the back of the couch, leaning down to press his lips to the underside of Clint's upper arm. Clint's wrist lifted, pressing a palm against Phil's chest, and Phil's teeth scraped the skin.

"Hello to you, too, sir," Clint said, dropping the book facedown on his chest and tipping his chin up for an upside-down kiss. "Have a nice vacation in sunny Pakistan?"

"How did you hear..." Phil bit back the pointless question and put on his best secret agent face. "On your feet, Barton. Your quarters. Now."

"Oh, yes, sir," Clint breathed, hopping to his feet, cradling the book to his chest like the precious treasure it was to Phil. 

"Oh, my thunder god," Phil thought. "That is the hottest thing I have ever seen that man do." And then he turned sharply on his heel to lead the way to Clint's room.

***

"'Tis a pity our Hawkeye could not join us for this night's festivities!" Thor boomed, flinging himself down in Clint's spot later that night. 

"Yeah, I'm thinking three weeks away from Coulson and even shooting little green goo balls that go 'SPLAT' when you hit them would lose it's appeal," Tony said, sidling behind the bar to begin pouring the drinks. 

"Why did they have to be green?" Bruce moaned softly from the opposite sofa where he had flung himself full-length on his back. There were traces of slime around his hairline and a bit dried on his temple. "Really. Trying to get that cleaned off of the Other Guy was an exercise in futility, I'm telling you."

"Fun from my side, though," Natasha said, sliding over the back of the other couch to land beside Thor. 

"Natasha," Steve said in his patiently-talking-to-recalcitrant-assassins voice as he followed them in. "Please do not tease Bruce about hosing down the Hulk. We've talked about...

"Holy SHIT!"

Captain America suddenly shouting obscenities in the middle of one of his gentle reprimands was more than enough to get everyone's attention.

"Thor!" he said, sounding strangled, "You're... and that's... Oh, shit!"

Thor jumped to his feet, shaking the floor. 

"What is it, Captain? Are you injured?"

And then the room went still as they all saw what Steve had seen: a garment bag in SHIELD blue now crushed partway behind the cushions on the couch, zipper loosened, and green goo from Thor's pants slimed across the suit inside. Natasha jumped over a coffee table to get as far away from the dangerous object as possible. Thor edged quietly after her, trying to look small and failing miserably. Bruce clapped both hands over his face and began reciting the periodic table to settle his nerves. Tony's eyes had gone wide, and he forgot to stop pouring the whiskey when the glass was full.

"We are going to die," Tony said calmly, setting the now-empty bottle on the bar with a splash. "He's going to come in here, see that, find a paperclip and murder us all."

"I don't think he'll waste time looking for a paperclip," Natasha said clinically. "I think that one was his favorite."

"There must be some way to salvage it," Thor said, tearing his eyes away from the mess to plead with Steve. "Surely the goo will come out in that washing apparatus in the kitchen."

"No," said Bruce from the couch, hands still covering his face. "Absolutely not. You are not putting Coulson's favorite suit in the dishwasher. Even I wouldn't object to letting the Hulk out to stop that one."

"JARVIS," barked Tony. "All night cleaners. Find one now."

"There is no such entity with SHEILD clearance for removing alien or experimental goo, sir," JARVIS replied. "I am not certain we could find any cleaner at any time that would meet such a need."

"Okay, so," Steve said, rubbing his hands. "We have to figure this out. Maybe a sponge for the goo and an iron to fix the wrinkles?"

"No," Natasha said flatly. "There is far too much goo for that."

"Can everyone stop saying 'goo' now, please?" Bruce asked plaintively. "Do you know how much of that I was still wearing when I shrank back down?" And he flipped over after making a muted gagging noise.

"Let's all just stop," Tony said. He tried to pick up the glass, saw his own mess and leaned down to press his lips to the edge of the bar, sucking up the puddle. He coughed slightly, slapped himself in the arc reactor and leaned back down to sip from the glass. "Alright," he said, finally able to lift the glass. "I propose we get it down to my lab and see what we can figure out there."

"This is such a remarkably bad idea..." Natasha said, carefully lifting the rumpled bag and holding it delicately away from her as she trailed after the hyper-manic genius with the rest of the team following.

***

"So let me get this straight," Phil said, still pinching his nose. "You SAT ON my suit." He looked over his fingers at Thor. "You mean to tell me that in those pants, you can't feel a suit under your ass?"

"Felt like my cape," Thor mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck and trying to look anywhere but at Coulson. 

"And then you decided to experiment on it," Phil continued, swinging his gaze back across to Tony. "What did you do to set it on fire?"

"It didn't happen at first," Tony said. "Really, we were making a great deal of progress with the slime removal. Dr. Banner was much more comfortable after we changed our terminology and had collected several samples. He even found a combination of gentle solvents that were doing pretty well at removing it without harming the wool!"

"The fire, Stark," Coulson replied, dropping his fingers from his face, forcing himself to keep his hands to his sides instead of reaching for the gun that had such a comforting, inviting weight against the small of his back. 

***

"Water isn't very effective at removing this stuff," Bruce said when they had gotten down to the shop with the wadded heap of gooey fabric spread out on a table. He scratched the side of his face, trying to flake a bit of the itchy substance off of his skin. "And it tastes foul, if anyone is wondering."

"I'm so glad I have the armor," Tony said to the air. "I love it. Passionately. I think I may try to find a way to marry it." 

"You'd never be monogamous with just one," Steve said, without looking up. 

"Probably a valid observation," Tony replied, unabashed.

"Slime, gentlemen," Natasha said from couch where she was flipping through a magazine.

"I'm going to take a few samples and run them through a spectrometer," Bruce said, rifling through a cupboard for a reasonably clean glass. Dummy helpfully held out the pitcher from the blender, half-full of grey sludge and mold. 

"Not what I'm after," Bruce told him. "But that might make an interesting experiment in its own right later on."

"I think I could get the robots to..." Tony began.

"No, Stark," Steve said, crossing his arms and setting his jaw. "This is a human problem, not a robot problem."

"But they might be able to..."

"Absolutely, unequivocally, no."

Bruce found a glass and a knife to scrape up some slime and shuffled off to his lab, muttering under his breath about organic compounds and decomposition gasses. Steve and Thor had found semi-clean rags and begun trying to gently soak some of the slime off the suit. Natasha was humming gently under her breath as she flipped pages on Scientific American. Tony twitched around in the background, picking up various tools to eyeball, looking back at the suit, sighing heavily, and laying them back down. He seemed a little lost when faced with a problem power tools couldn't solve. 

A couple of hours later, Bruce reentered the workshop carrying several beakers and a stack of clean rags. Natasha stretched regally and reached out to collect the rags before they tumbled to the floor. 

"So I've found a few things that might work," Bruce said, as Steve began lifting beakers from his arms to place them carefully on the table. "We might need to be a bit careful about not mixing them, but these should get the slime off without causing any further damage to the suit."

"The brave doctor to the rescue!" Tony said as he whizzed by on a wheeled chair pushed by Dummy. 

For some time, the team worked in silence broken only by Tony's "WHEEEEEE!" when the chair went out of control and he went spinning across the room to crash into some mess or other. The fabric of the suit was reappearing from under the coating of green, and everyone was starting to breathe a little bit easier. 

And then Thor jostled Natasha's arm, only the smallest amount, and her rag met his rag, and they both dropped to the suit.

"Uh, Bruce," Natasha said, backing away slowly. "Is it supposed to do that?" 

"That" was the slime beginning to turn to gloop, and then going very hard, very quickly.

"Oh," Bruce replied, quietly. "I think I'm going to go sit over there for a minute, if it's all the same to you."

"What happened?" Tony asked, rolling up beside the table. "Oh. Well."

The argument that followed lasted a solid hour, with Thor waving Mjölnir over his head, Natasha flicking a knife in his face, Tony threatening to get in a suit, and Steve finally slamming his hand on the table for quiet. On the couch, Bruce ignored them and read an article in Playboy. 

"So we have to get this off," Tony said. "Please don't ever tell Agent Coulson I ever admitted to this, but he kinda scares me. And, well, after he sorta died and all, I feel bad about being mean to him."

"Doesn't stop you," Natasha drawled, twirling her knife through her fingers.

"Maybe we could cut it off with an acetylene torch," Tony said brightly, ignoring Natasha's words and her knife. 

"Tony," Steve said slowly. "Exactly how much have you slept in the past week?"

"I've gotten a couple of hours," Tony replied. "At least eight."

"You really should try to get a bit more. Your ideas get sort of... insane, otherwise."

"That's what Pepper says," Tony answered. "But, no, listen. I could weld a wart off of a fly's ass with a torch. It could work."

"No fire, Tony," Bruce called from the couch, turning the magazine to eye the centerfold's legs. 

"Put that down and get over here," Steve barked, seeing the cover. "You know that isn't good for your blood pressure."

An hour later, after several failed experiments and several more bad decisions, the sprinkler system had put out most of the fire, which was good, as the fire extinguishers wielded by You, Dummy, and Butterfingers seemed to only make the now-solid goo burn a bit hotter. But the smoke seemed a bit dangerous, so Thor stuffed the suit back in the bag and carried it to the upper deck to let the wind carry the fumes away. Steve tried pointing out that exposing all of New York to noxious gas might be a bad idea, but, after Tony brought up the usual smog, they all just shrugged at one another and left it to air. Only Bruce had gone to bed when Phil came trailing out in the morning wearing a pair of Clint's pajama pants, a slightly too-tight Captain America t-shirt, and a gun stuffed in the back of his waistband. The remaining Avengers bravely and heroically pointed to the smoldering mess outside the window and tried to edge out of the room before the yelling started. 

They did not get far.

***

"Anthony Edward Stark," Coulson said. "Please tell me you did not try to cut mysterious alien goo off of a fabric suit with flammable gas."

"No, Agent," Tony said. "I can't tell you that."

"Fine," Coulson said, and Clint flinched. He knew that tone: usually, he was the only one who got in enough trouble to hear it. "Stop. No more explanations. No more ridiculous excuses. I need something to wear. I think my pants from yesterday are fine, but the shirt and jacket will not work."

"And the tie," Clint said. "Don't forget we..."

"Yes, Barton. Shut up," Coulson interrupted.

"But the tie really won't," Clint answered.

"Shut. Up. Before I take it on myself to shut you up."

"But we already used the tie to..."

"Specialist, shut the hell up or you will be doing inspection duty in Poland for the next eight weeks," Coulson said, his voice silky and almost pleasant.

"Yes, sir," Clint said, trying to contain his smirk.

"Here," said Bruce from the doorway. "The other guy is starting to get restless with all the yelling in here. Have a shirt. Wear it in good health. Keep it, for all I care."

Coulson caught the flying purple shirt and stared at it with something resembling horror in the fractional widening of his eyes and the ghost of a downturn at the corner of his mouth. Then he caught the challenge in Clint's wicked eyes and turned silently to march back to Clint's quarters to dress.

***

The team next saw Coulson at the evening debrief after the gooey green slime aliens had made a reappearance. His voice had been in their ears, calling praise for the inspired use of Bruce's solvents by Black Widow and Captain America, demanding someone get the acetylene torch away from a gleefully cackling Iron Man, and exchanging the usual insults and inside jokes with Hawkeye. But when the team filed into the meeting room at SHEILD HQ, all of them stopped at once. That could not possibly be Coulson. He would never unbend enough look like that: purple shirt unbuttoned halfway down his muscular, slightly furred and rather scarred chest, sleeves rolled to the elbows to show off toned forearms, tails untucked over his favorite jeans that had been hidden in his office.

The debrief was astonishingly quick, no questions, no asides - everyone too busy trying to figure out a way to stare without staring. Even Barton's famous mouth was too busy hanging open to start with his usual insubordinate jibes and derailing. He, however, felt no compunction to avoid staring. And, after a few moments of paper shuffling as everyone tried to sign the forms at once, it was over. The Avengers all sat at the table as Coulson rose and asked if there was anything else.

"Keep the shirt, Agent," Bruce said with an Eeyore-like sigh . "It looks better on you, anyway."

"Yes, Dr. Banner," Phil said, grinning just a bit impishly, just a bit evilly, and with just a bit of manic glee. He leaned on the table, flexing his exposed chest and arms. "It does rather, doesn't it." 

Then his face went serious, all Agent, eyes dangerous. "You all still owe me a suit, however." 

And he turned on his heel to stalk from the room.

**Author's Note:**

> This is for all of you, and you know who you are.


End file.
